“What you call love—the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish folly—left behind me, I think forever, when—”
“Ay, indeed,—when?”
“I came of age!”
“Hoary cynic! and you despise love! So did I once. Your time may come.”
“I think not. Does any animal, except man, love its fellow she-animal as man loves woman?”
“As man loves woman? No, I suppose not.”
“And why should the subject animals be wiser than their king? But to return: you would like to have my youth and my careless enjoyment of youth?”
“Can you ask,—who would not?” Margrave looked at me for a moment with unusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt changes common to his capricious temperament, began to sing softly one of his barbaric chants,—a chant different from any I had heard him sing before, made, either by the modulation of his voice or the nature of the tune, so sweet that, little as music generally affected me, this thrilled to my very heart’s core. I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when he paused,—
“Is not that a love-song?”
“No;” said he, “it is the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the serpent.”